How a prohibition stance led a Lafayette man to become a presidential nominee

Has a Lafayette man ever been nominated by a national political party for President of the United States?

Yes.

His name was J. Frank Hanly. But the chances are you have never heard of him, for he lived here, practiced law here, and was elected governor from here long, long ago.

It seems odd, but there are no memorials to Frank Hanly in Lafayette, no streets named for him, no public parks. So today let us go deep into long forgotten lore and get acquainted with the man.

He was born in a log cabin near Champaign, Ill., in 1863, and grew up in a poor family. As a boy he dug ditches to make money and worked his way through Eastern Illinois normal school at Danville, got a job teaching school, went on digging ditches, and studying law in his spare time.

In 1889 he was admitted to the practice of law at Williamsport, Ind., and in 1890 was elected to a four-year term in the Indiana Senate. In 1894 he was elected to Congress from the 9th District.

In 1896 he moved to Lafayette to join state senator Will R. Wood in the practice of law, and sought re-election to Congress.

But congressional redistricting had now put incumbent E.D. Crumpacker in the same district as Hanly, and in a Republican District Committee nominating meeting Hanly lost renomination to Crumpacker by 47-100ths of a vote.

From 1896 through 1904 Hanly, Wood, and a third partner, Daniel Simms, practiced law in Lafayette. The Hanly family lived in a house on Owen Street.

During 1902, Hanly, a forceful speaker and militant foe of liquor, announced he would run for the Republican nomination for governor in 1904.

The GOP state convention nominated him unanimously on its second ballot in the spring of 1904, and in the fall Hanly won the office of governor by a plurality of 85,000, the largest in state history.

From 1905 through 1908, Gov. Hanly reigned in the statehouse at Indianapolis. They were stormy years. He was a strict moralist who cared nothing for party loyalty or political friendships. Hanly forced the resignations of two fellow Republicans – Auditor David Sherick and Secretary of State Daniel W. Storms, the latter a fellow from near Romney.

In 1907 his former law partner Wood, now a Hoosier congressman, publicly split with Gov. Hanly, saying Hanly was “power mad.”

Hanly almost single-handedly “wrecked” the state Republican Party for several years. Yet during his administration Indiana got its first primary election law, its first minimum wage law for teachers, its first pure food and drug law, stronger bank controls, strong anti-liquor legislation and, in 1908, a county option law that enabled counties to vote “wet” or “dry.”

Hanly left office early in 1909 unpopular with Republicans but dedicated to continuing his fight for nationwide prohibition.

He argued for the “dry” cause before the U.S. Supreme Court, and became president of a speaker’s bureau of prohibitionists which toured the nation as the Flying Squadron.

On July 21, 1916, J. Frank Hanly was nominated for President by the Prohibition Party at its national convention at St. Paul, Minn., on the first ballot.

He remained a prohibitionist, speaker, author, and influence in the nation until, on Aug. 1, 1920, en route to a speaking engagement in Ohio, he died when the car in which he was riding was hit by a train near Dennison, Ohio. He is buried at Indianapolis.

About the Old Lafayette series:

Each week, the Journal & Courier is reprinting some of the best of Bob Kriebel's Old Lafayette columns. Today is the story of J. Frank Hanly, a Tippecanoe County lawyer who was nominated for President of the United States in 1916. This is taken from a column published Nov. 26, 1978.